Aquari

by DD White

  * * *

  Ploabot had always been intimidated by the look of the Hall of Audience with its big dark windows in front that climbed from the ground to the top of the tall stadium-like Audience chamber. The Hall of Audience could serve as an arena for concerts if not for the fact it had been designed to be a place where representatives of the people like Ploabot could gain audience with the King. Just before Ploabot arrived at the Hall of Audience he had heard news that another ousted Ministry of Science member had drove off a bridge that morning to commit suicide. Ploabot had been talking to some protesters who were encouraging Ploabot in his attempt to convince the powers that be to repent of closing down the Ministry of Science. The protesters told him the Hall of Audience authorities would not allow them in because there were no more seats available. A crowd gathered to attend, and it looked like there would be nearly a full house for this audience, as if Ploabot wasn’t nervous enough. King Worapor of the Magites had agreed to hear the people’s case for re-opening the Ministry of Science, which had been abruptly shut down by the King’s decree at the urgings of the Aungtalli Bishop who had the power to order a King around. The Aungtalli Bishop would also be attending this audience. Ploabot nervously adjusted his capital city council robes as he entered the crowded audience hall to find his podium on the stage near the King’s seat.

  King Worapor had been a good King for the last 190 years, since being assigned to serve the throne by the Magites family in the year 199,930. The Ministry of Science had revolutionized civilization since being established in the year 175,300, over 24,000 years ago, and closing it down would surly be the most controversial act of his reign. The only explanation anyone got for this Ministry shutdown would be that “Ministry broken.

  The gods have spoken.” By the looks of the crowd, that explanation didn’t seem to work as reliably as it did in less enlightened ages of the past. Outside on his way in, Ploabot became encouraged by some other youth who were chirping protest slogans like, “Close the Ministry, it’s too much to take!

  Aungtalli oppress and the gods are fake!”

  The angry chanting bordered on anti-Aungtallism, a bigotry Ploabot had been careful to not indulge, since that had been such a problem with some people of the past, and resulted in the general opinion that anti-Aungtallism was a symptom of an immoral character who should be shunned by popular culture. Many a capital council member had their career finished because of accusations of anti-Aungtallism. Still Ploabot understood the concerns of the people, and it had been Ploabot’s job to represent those concerns without indulging the baser emotions of the situation that were inclined to disrespect the superior mediators between Uranian and god.

  King Worapor appeared and the audience stood and obediently filled the chamber with a silence that dowsed all the chirping that filled the hall before the King’s entrance. Then the Aungtalli Bishop appeared, and occupied a podium next to Ploabot’s. Religious robes covered the Bishop along with a cap that covered his bald, and slightly larger than a regular Uranian’s skull. The Aungtalli were the chosen ones of the gods who were entrusted the secrets of the energy and technology that the Ministry of Science had been reluctantly allowed to try to figure out. It had been an arrangement that gave the non-chosen ones a chance to catch up to the superior species of Uranians on the planet. The problem seemed to begin when Ministry of Science archaeologists uncovered ancient technology similar to Aungtalli technology, and it had been from a time before the beginning of recorded history. They were discovering Uranian civilization from even before the Aungtalli creation myths, which established the creation of the world by the gods of Ei. Even before this archaeological discovery, the average modern day Uranian regarded the gods as deceptive, and the myths were the stuff of children’s stories that were designed to nurture virtue and obedience to authority. They were not lies because of the truths they illuminated, but they were also not true because, let’s face it, that just couldn’t have happened that way.

  The King signaled for the audience to begin, and an announcer laid down the agenda for this event. With a nod from King Worapor to Ploabot, it became time for Ploabot to make the people’s case. “I Ploabot, thank you good King Worapor

  for allowing me to have this rapport

  to plead in this hall, the case on the behalf

  of the Ministry of Science we have

  for the sake of science that changed the world.

  From science civilization unfurled.

  I have come here to ask this ear of you,

  King Worapor, Bishop, audience too.

  The Ministry of Science was shut down,

  but they did no wrong, no foul play around.

  We have Science to thank for all we know

  since Kings of twenty thousand years ago.

  Since then we’ve had great inventors as well,

  Sonedi, Thybla, Housewesting, Vinkel,

  and Dayfair with his car engine as well.

  We’ve learned so much to arrive in this age

  of learning from Science Ministry sage

  that we can’t shut it down during your thrown

  with “gods said so” the only reason known.

  What has the Ministry of Science done

  except brighten each day under our Sun?

  We just have too much to thank them all for

  to close it down throwing them out the door.

  I implore you to heed Uranian

  before your assigned an infamous reign.”

  After Ploabot finished it became the Aungtalli Bishop’s turn to offer the case for why shutting down the Ministry had been a necessary action. The Aungtalli dialect tended to be less regimented in structure than the language of the common Uranian.

  “How dare you even dare to try

  to question and to defy

  the true Aungtalli decree,

  close the Science Ministry.

  We elite Aungtalli do indeed share

  our wisdom of the gods because we care.

  The gods have however, appointed me

  to keep Uranians from blaspheme.

  They gave you many things communications, the car,

  but blasphemy the Ministry of Science wasn’t far.

  We, the Aungtalli heard an audible sound.

  The gods told us to shut the Ministry down.

  For an age we allowed you to look into the mystery

  and it helped you all immensely throughout your history.

  Now that must end, we’ve done the deed.

  Close the Ministry as decreed.

  Should Aungtalli/Uranian relations be through?

  Uranians seem resentful after the gifts we gave you.

  Remember we were chosen ones by the gods

  to be different than you, we have different bods.

  It was indeed the gods that created this schism.

  We are the victims of anti-Aungtallism.

  That is Aungtalli history it is true,

  and that after all that we have shown you.

  The job of the Ministry is obviously done,

  so go home and enjoy what your history won.

  All the comforts of modern life won’t go away

  just because of what blasphemous scientists say.

  Now they are all gone, and there’s peace another day.

  Accept that the Ministry has now gone away.

  Ploabot should have expected such a rebuttal, and the Bishop drawing the anti-Aungtallism card, but he became enraged by the Bishop’s disregard of the rights of Uranians to pursue knowledge on their own. It seemed as if only Aungtalli were entitled to the luxury of knowing the secrets of nature. Ploabot made his rebuttal. “It should just be obvious to all here

  that the Aungtalli keep power with fear

  of wrath from the gods on some other side

  while those deemed problems commit suicide.

  It was just this morning, another one

  of the self-inflicted deaths
always done

  of scientist once their success is won.

  Like Dayfair, Wellmax, and Stonewheat had died,

  today saw a scientist’s suicide.”

  The Aungtalli Bishop became furious at the implication that his people had anything to do with any Ministry of Science deaths today or at any time in history. Ploabot had evidently over played his political hand, and had gone beyond the acceptable conduct of a counsel member. Ploabot became accused of playing the base bigotry that some Uranians had against the Aungtalli, who always could insist that they had long been persecuted throughout history just for being different. “Aungtalli priests do what we must to avoid blasphemy

  like the kind Ploabot shows, a product of that Ministry.

  Our secrets we Aungtalli generously did teach,

  yet now anti-Aungtallism is in the speech.”

  That note seemed to turn the tide of the debate against Ploabot, and he became chirped into silence by the offended crowd in the audience who seemed suddenly reminded of the perils of blasphemy that they had been rigorously taught about in the Aungtalli churches. Ploabot even suddenly somehow offended the audience he had been there to defend. It was a paradox since nobody really believed in the gods who haven’t been seen by regular Uranians in thousands of years and were the stuff of myth to begin with. Yet there were the Aungtalli who kept the secrets of technologies that were beyond even what Aungtalli were capable of inventing or understanding themselves. That had also probably become a reason they reluctantly allowed the Ministry of Science to exist in the first place. Ploabot left the Hall feeling defeated, but assured by an old saying that is said of making a case to the King. Even if there were no immediate response from the King, the spoken words still have entered the ear of the King to remain there an influence from then on. Ploabot just remembered the King scowling at him from the mention of the suicide until the whole thing got over. Ploabot became dismayed that the crowd he entered the Hall believing he defended seemed to just suddenly turn on him.

  After the audience the King sat in his quarters to ponder the words said as required of all Kings that attend an audience from the people. It had been a drastic move to shut down the Ministry of Science, but the truth of the matter was that it wasn’t really an unusual event. It had often been shut down at times throughout history and the history re-written over. The problem became that the more famous inventors were harder to erase from school textbooks and history, but they too had to be killed. King Worapor didn’t exactly understand why himself, but it had something to do with scientists figuring out how to store and generate the sacred energy. King Worapor didn’t understand the science of the energy, but the King knew what that energy had become to him and the three royal families of the planet who owned the economy of Urania with their control of how the energy was distributed and used by the regular Uranians. That understanding formed a mutual interest between the royal families and the Aungtalli, who for all their kooky mind-control obsessed rituals and beliefs, really did have direct contact with superior beings who provided all those Aungtalli technological wonders like the flying machines and teleportation devices. The Ministry of Science had been nowhere near figuring those Aungtalli achievements out. In this day and age Uranian technologies were just barely figuring out the computer and something similar to cell phone technologies that were made possible just recently by the smallest receiver technology ever devised by Ministry scientists. The scientists learned too much from the ruins of the ancient pre-history Kingdoms in the Southern Desert, which they had discovered. It would be the secret of how the energy can be harvested from the ground that threatened to shut the Aungtalli/royal family businesses down, and as King of the planet, Worapor could not allow that to happen.

  Before the King came to his quarters the Aungtalli Bishop had took him aside while still furious from the audience. He wanted Ploabot killed because he had been close to the Hanson fellow who had become the administrative head of the entire Ministry of Science. The Bishop said Hanson had confided the forbidden secret to Ploabot and so he had to be eliminated. The King then reacted with a rare show of his authority over the Aungtalli and refused to allow any harm to come to Ploabot who , after all, had been a respected representative of the people. Ploabot would surly issue a formal apology by the end of the day for his improper speech. It could hardly be argued as a good reason to put someone to death. The Hanson fellow on the other hand, was dangerous, and the King understood why that outspoken scientist had to die. King Worapor figured he’d be hearing about another tragic suicide by a Ministry of Science member named Hanson soon.